Everyone knows that high IQ is no guarantee of success, happiness, or virtue, but until the discoveries of modern brain researchers, theorists could only guess why. Daniel Goleman's fascinating report from the frontiers of psychology and neuroscience Everyone knows that high IQ is no guarantee of success, happiness, or virtue, but until the discoveries of modern brain researchers, theorists could only guess why. Daniel Goleman's fascinating report from the frontiers of psychology and neuroscience offers us startling new insight into our "two minds" -- the rational and the emotional -- and how they together shape our destiny. Beginning deep in the brain, Emotional Intelligence shows us the exact mechanism of an "emotional hijack," when passion overcomes reason. Through vivid examples, Goleman then delineates the crucial skills of emotional intelligence, and shows how they determine our success in relationships and work, and even our physical well-being. What emerges is a crucial new way to talk about being smart. The final chapters reveal the possibilities -- and limits -- of "emotional literary," as it is taught by both parents and educators. The book concludes with a compelling vision of what true emotional intelligence means for us both as individuals and as a society. The message of this eye-opening book is one we must take to heart: the true "bell curve" for a democracy must measure emotional intelligence. Daniel Goleman offers a new vision of excellence and a vital new curriculum for life that can change the future for us and our children. ...Continua Nascondi

A scientific book disclosing the ground-breaking topic that emotional intelligence may be a more telling predictor of a person's success than IQ scores.
A long and difficult but rewarding book. With a lot of scientific research data and statistics (

A scientific book disclosing the ground-breaking topic that emotional intelligence may be a more telling predictor of a person's success than IQ scores.

A long and difficult but rewarding book. With a lot of scientific research data and statistics (though some of them may be a bit misleading, many of them sound very objective with control), it explains the importance of emotional literacy. In what aspects do we need to pay attention so that emotion will not overwhelm our brain? At what age does the brain mature and what is the optimal time for teaching emotional programme?

Emotions are the essence that helps us to survive our revolutionary history, but nowadays, uncontrollable emotions are the reasons for the increasing murder, rape, violence and divorce rates. It also accounts for why some people can excel but others not, though with similar intellectual aptitudes.

While the optimal time for emotional learning is childhood, psychologists and psychotherapy indicate that our brains are subject to change. The lessons learnt need to be practiced repeatedly, because the brain requires the response to be imprinted in it for immediate reaction which does not route through the rational mind.

ANGER: "escalating anger as 'a sequence of provocations, each triggering an excitatory reaction that dissipates slowly.'"

BALM FOR ANGER: 1. mitigating information to challenge the thoughts that trigger the anger; 2. cooling off and waiting the adrenal surge decreases

FOUL MOOD/THINKING: "The mental resources expended on one cognitive task - the worrying - simply detract from the resources available for processing other information; if we are preoccupied by worries that we're going to flunk the test we're taking, we have that much less attention to expend on figuring out the answers. Our worries become self-fulfilling prophecies, propelling us toward the very disaster they predict."

BALM FOR WORRY: 1. self-awareness to catch the worrisome episodes as near their beginning as possible - ideally as soon as or just after the fleeting catastrophic image triggers the worry-anxiety cycle; 2. practice the relaxation method daily

"People who are optimistic see a failure as due to something that can be changed so that they can succeed next time around, while pessimists take the blame for failure, ascribing it to some lasting characteristic they are helpless to change."

"The problem for a marriage begins when one or another spouse feels flooded almost continually. Then the partner feels overwhelmed by the other partner, is always on guard for an emotional assault or injustice, becomes hypervigilant for any sign of attack, insult, or grievance, and is sure to overreact to even the least sign... the flooded partner has come to think the worst of the spouse virtually all the time, reading everything she does in a negative light.. starts to see any and all problems in the marriage as severe and impossible to fix, since the flooding itself sabotages any attempt to work things out."

NONDEFENSIVE LISTENING: "it is possible for a couple to purposely edit what they hear, ignoring the hostile and negative parts of the exchange - the nasty tone, the insult, the contemptuous criticism - to hear the main message. For this feat it helps if partners can remember to see each other's negativity as an implicit statement of how important the issue is to them - a demand for attention to be paid."

"What typically escalates to conflict begins with not communicating, making assumptions, and jumping to conclusions, sending a 'hard' message in ways that make it tough for people to hear what you're saying."

Characteristics of the emotional mind:

categorical: thinking everything in black and white

personalized: perceived events with a bias centering on oneself

self-confirming: suppressing or ignoring memories or facts that would undermine its beliefs and seizing on those that support it

EQ is something everyody talkes about, but it seems to mean if you can control your temper. It seems a person who lose temper is with low EQ. But, it is obviously not what the author mean.
The author first put Aristotle's challenge as below:
Anyone c

EQ is something everyody talkes about, but it seems to mean if you can control your temper. It seems a person who lose temper is with low EQ. But, it is obviously not what the author mean.

The author first put Aristotle's challenge as below:

Anyone can become angry - that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way - this is not so easy.

– Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics.

I really love this! It is not about how not to angry, but angry properly. It is not to avoid your negative emotions, but on recongizing and managing them.

Physically, we must aware that actually the scientist know very little about how emotion works. The brief description is that the sense organs will pass signal to Thalamus where is tranlsated into language. At the same time the signal will transmitted to Amygdala, our fear center as well in a quicker transmission. That's why we can has fear response before we are even aware of it.